


Disparity

by recrudescence



Category: Firefly
Genre: F/M, Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-15
Updated: 2009-11-15
Packaged: 2017-10-02 20:56:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/recrudescence/pseuds/recrudescence
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Strung out halfway between everyday life and some other plane entirely, wrapped up in one another and never wanting to let go.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Disparity

**Author's Note:**

> Contains sex, drugs, major character death, dirty talk, AU, consensual underage sex, consensual CSI, and probably a few other things I'm forgetting or can't word properly.

"You were with someone," she teases, running a finger along his cheekbone.  
   
"Maybe that isn't any of your business." Simon turns onto his side and shoves a pillow at her, along with a look that he knows isn't anything close to stern.  
   
"Something's different," River insists, and the mattress bounces as she wriggles in closer. "I can tell." She can read him so well, always could.  
   
"It was a man," he says softly, and River nods as if she already knew. Sprawls out over him until he can smell her hair and taste her mouth.  
   
"Tell me more."  
   
She loves hearing about the things he does, what he learns, what it's like to be living in the real world instead of on the family estate. It isn't often that River gets to visit him, but for once they both have the weekend free. Simon hasn't finished his internship yet, but there's no way it's going to take him the entire year. River's already starting the graduate program at her school, much farther ahead than Simon was at that age, and she still manages to ask questions about everything.  
   
Simon always answers them. "It was after a benefit dinner the hospital was holding. Some of us decided to go out for drinks. We were passing around cups of sake and he teased me, said that on his home world I probably wouldn't even be old enough to have one."  
   
"How old was he?" Legs tangling with his own, silky strands of hair through his fingers, River's head propped on her palm.  
   
"I didn't ever ask. He's a neurologist at Harschman Central. Handsome." He can feel her smiling beside him and grins a little self-consciously. "He touched my leg under the table and I swear I almost hit the ceiling when I jumped."  
   
"What was it like? Obviously you let him, unless you tried to break his nose and defend your honor and he bedded you anyway."  
   
She's giggling, but Simon just arches an eyebrow and lowers his voice a bit. "Very gentle. So carefully I almost didn't notice at first. Like this." Palming the soft bare length of her thigh, just above the knee, gradually circling his hand higher under the pleats of her skirt. "Incredibly slow, just watching me to see what would happen." Moving up until her breathing catches. "His eyes were green."  
   
"Like spring," she murmurs, shifting into his touch, and Simon's brow furrows for a moment because they actually _weren't_, but he doesn't bother correcting her.  
   
"He took me home with him. Laid me out, kissed me for a long time. Asked me if I had ever been with a man before. I told him the truth." A small smile, a small flush, River's legs parting; heat under his hand and laughter under his lips. "Said that he would make it last, make sure I enjoyed it…undid my shirt, put his mouth on me."

 

River has already kicked out of her skirt and turned onto her back again, executing a sort of horizontal tour j_eté_. Linking bird-boned hands high above her head and watching him through languid eyes as she stretches, shirt riding up. Showing off. "What then?"  
   
Since childhood, she's always been more straightforward about these things than he has. Simon sometimes envies that, whatever it is River possesses that makes her so impervious to embarrassment. "Took off my clothes, used his tongue for a bit." The words come out sounding rushed together and mildly disbelieving, and Simon leaves off on talking--ducks his head to continue the narrative that way, flimsy material easily dragged down and his sister's pink-sweet heatedness slick and quivering under the deliberate laves of his tongue. The hem of her shirt brushes his forehead as she shimmies out of that as well.

"Don't tease, Simon, it isn't nice." Her fingers clench in his hair, slipping through the strands to urge him down for more.

Now that the plaintiveness is audible in her voice, he takes all the time in the world before responding to it--teases the tip of his tongue inside, _feels_ the way she tries not to cry out before she actually _does_ it, curving into a lithe bend of slender-strong muscle and pink-perfect skin. Slowly, he moves back up, pushing the taste of her into her mouth and getting a taste of her own urgency in return. Smaller hands scrabbling up under his shirt, stripping it over his head so fast it almost catches on his chin.

Drawing it out, as if he's savoring each syllable; he can't hold back anything while his sister is like this: "Then he had me hold myself open, spread completely, and he…" A slim leg over his shoulder, because River _knows _before he even says it, his mouth pressing against the tender inner curve of a knee. Tracing a fingertip through the hot wetness of her cunt to circle gently at her anus, feeling her tense and moan softly. "He touched me, there. Only for a moment. I wasn't sure whether to tell him to stop or keep going. I heard him laugh a little, but not in a mocking way. And then he kissed me, right here." Pursing lips against an inner thigh, nibbling until a faint mark is left behind, then pausing and drawing back when River whines. "I thought he might lick me, try to push his tongue inside, but instead he told me to turn over."  
   
Breathing shaky-hard, lips nipped red from his teeth, she's squirming up to do just that.  
   
"He helped me up on my hands and knees. There was some kind of oil, smooth and sweet-smelling." There is, waiting where he placed it earlier, and he takes it. "Already on his hands when he guided me to move my legs farther..." Both hands moving down velvety skin until he's pushing her cheeks slightly apart with his thumbs, hissing at the almost surprised little sound she utters. "I could feel him there, knew what he was going to do, and he kissed up my back, my neck, telling me I was doing so well, that it would be fine, everything would be fine, making me_ want_ to please him, to make it as good for him as he was making it for me."

 

She's rocking into him, wet and wanting and bared completely, and Simon strokes along her spine her like he's actually addressing the words to her instead of relaying them. Hasty-hard rub against the front of his trousers, then he's tipping the bottle into his palm.  
   
"His hand was slippery. Warm. There was sweat on my face and oil on my stomach because he kept touching me--I remember he kissed me when I turned my head, held my cock and made me move into his hand." Breathing out heavily, eyes half-open, mouth working a gradual path over River's shoulder blade, hearing her high-pitched little gasps, rolling a tight nipple between his fingers momentarily before caressing down her middle and rubbing against the slickness between her legs. Voice hitching. "He put a finger inside me. Just the tip at first. I must have made some kind of sound—he just kissed my ear, bit it a little, said things to me that drove me insane. Asked me how it felt. I told him it was strange, but I wanted more. And he pushed it in a little deeper." Low and precise, moving his other hand up between River's thighs, circling the rim before almost daring to penetrate. "How does it feel, _baobei_?"  
   
"Simon…please?" Barely whimpered, sounding young and vulnerable, head bowed so her hair hangs over one shoulder, body arching back for more. Can't say no to her, never could for long, wouldn't want to.  
   
"Good girl." She bristles at that and his lips curve against the hot bend of her neck. "That's what he told me, too—good boy. It made me feel a little indignant, like I was a pet or a child or someone who needed to be coddled, but the way he said it…all I could do was groan. Just like you did a moment ago." Kissing her nape, her lips when she twists to meet his eyes. Palming a firm breast with one hand, feeling the soft flesh and hard nipple against his fingers as the index of his other hand slips more deeply inside her—clench-contracting, squeezed so tightly, and Simon's erection is pushing and throbbing inside his pants, spreading heat through the cloth of his underpants, but this isn't about him. It really isn't. "He asked if I could take another. If I wanted it all."  
   
"I do," she whispers, and Simon leans in to trace his lips up the scroll of her ear as he flicks open his belt.  
   
Slick and liquid over his cock, his hand, leaving gleaming streaks of it on her skin as he guides her back onto him. Strained and breathless and shushing her when she keens quietly. Head drooping forward, eyes and jaw clenched tightly closed, and his arms struggling not to overzealously reach out and _grasp_. Giving her time, letting her settle and sigh and tentatively try to move. Both of them streaked with sweat and oil, small shift-surges of skin on skin. "I touched myself while he was in me. Can you do that for me, River?" Almost not aware whether he’s saying it or thinking it, only knowing that she _does._  
   
He can tell when she pushes a finger inside, fucks herself as he's fucking her, and it's dirty and intimate and he's not going to last, _can't_, neither of them can. When she comes, she's silent and shivery and he knows she's rubbing a thumb over herself the way she likes—her whole body clenching and shuddering and he’s still _in _her when it happens, murmuring soothing nonsense and moving so slowly, so carefully, can’t ever be too careful.

 

Coming himself not long after, pulling out partway, then delicately painting his fingers with his own release and stroking up the cleft of her to press them back inside her. She sob-curses when he draws away, gasps when he eases in again, passage cinching still tighter around him as he turns her on her back, dips his head lower, and licks there in time to the push-curling of his fingers. Keeps going and doesn't stop until she cries out and arches into his mouth, autumn-leaf tremulous, whispering his name like it's a language all its own.

 

He holds her, warm and safe and alive, and lets himself drift.

 

Remembering, how he’d been home for a holiday weekend and the two of them had gone hunting for hodgeberries together. River had a penchant for playing games that by rights they both should have outgrown and when she toppled over a log to sprawl on the ground, Simon’s first thought had been that she was reenacting some new folktale she’d discovered somewhere.

 

A handful of berries scattered over the dead leaves and pine needles, River’s head lolling on shoulders he shook hesitantly with both hands. His sister was dead—different from those times when she had playacted at being dead, before—and he had kissed her to bring her back, since that was what worked in the old storybooks River loved so much.

  
Both their hands and mouths were stained with hodgeberry juice and the world was swimming with shapes and colors Simon had never seen before and he had been petrified that River was gone forever and nothing could bring her back--panicking because there was nothing he could do, feeling for a heartbeat in her slim neck, slack wrists, between her breasts, unbuttoning her blouse and burying his face there to try to kiss life back into her. Unable to get his feet underneath him or his wits about him; unusual for someone always so cool in times of crisis. Touching her everywhere, stroking and petting and pleading before gathering her close and feeling the world drop away.  
   
They awoke in the woods, half-dressed and tangled together. Lips smeared with purple, eyes glazed, movements sluggish, both of them crying and holding each other and kissing against the moss-covered base of a tree, grateful and confused. Her nipples had been tight and sensitive under his tongue, her stomach had squirmed, her legs had parted and wrapped around him, narrow hips jerking and lifting to let him in deeper, her hot little mouth gasping his name into his neck. _Iloveyou_. Over and over again.  
   
Both of them were taken to the hospital and treated for pesticide poisoning later that day, after they somehow made it back home. Simon had been embarrassed for not realizing it from the start. "We thought they were wild," River had tried to explain when their parents were discussing whether it was necessary to bring legal action against the Cambersons.  
   
Wild. Heady and drugged, strung out halfway between everyday life and some other plane entirely, wrapped up in one another and never wanting to let go. "Kiss me more," she had said, taking his hand some time afterward, when both of them were lucid and home from the hospital. No trace of hodgeberries left on her tongue when she licked into his mouth.  
   
On the rare occasions he had time for girls, he would tell her about it, act out everything on her own body until she writhed and whimpered and fell apart for him so beautifully none of it seemed real.  
   
Now, he soothes her and kisses her and draws a blanket over himself, trying not to think of anything at all as she slips off the bed to freshen up. Again, none of it seems real.

\--

"You certainly have an unconventional imagination," the Companion says smoothly, fastening her sash. She's always River whenever they meet. Hair loose, face free of cosmetics save a little kohl that makes her eyes look wider and brighter. Simon can scarcely recall her actual name.  
   
"Have you considered expressing your interest to a male member of the Guild?" He knows she must be smiling gently. Encouraging, but not pushing, flawlessly as she can without touching him—also one of his requests, for afterward. "Capital City has some excellent resources; I'd be happy to refer you. Your descriptions were quite vivid."  
   
Simon just sinks further under the blanket until she leaves.  
   
Ever since his sister passed away, he hasn't been the same, and he knows it.  
   
He'd come out after finishing a surgery, heard how River had concussed herself at that top-of-the-line government-run school and died instantly, and for a time absolutely nothing had been able to make him believe it.  
   
He's one of the top surgeons on Osiris, as rich and respected as he was always supposed to be, even married once for a short time, but he still can't keep River from his mind for long. Trying to remember her, trying to make new memories, trying to mangle the facts until he can forget them altogether. Reinventing what could have happened if they'd had the time, struggling to take the past and make it better, erase the Academy from both their lives entirely.  
   
They said she was a wonder, more brilliant than any student they had ever encountered, but the family hadn't been permitted to visit and Simon had begun to worry. When they found her body on the school grounds, the Tams were told it was the result of some stupid, dangerous prank. Disabling security cameras and trying to scale the Academy's walls. Some kind of hazing, some kind of dare. Impulsive and reckless and not River's style at all. Simon was sure she had been trying to run away, that something hadn't been right. That River had wanted nothing more than to come back home.  
   
Four years ago, all of it, and he can't let it go.  
   
Curled in his bed, feeling sullied and bitter and lost, knowing that eventually he'll be taking a scalding shower to make himself feel clean and a pill to make himself sleep dreamlessly.  
   
He can't make himself move just yet.


End file.
